Energy audits

Currently, there are up to 60,000 elevators functioning within the five boroughs of New York City. For these elevators to remain safe and efficient, building administrators have to conduct regular elevator inspections NYC.

It is however an open secret that these building administrators skip out on energy audits NYC for lack of understanding how vital these surveys are on the safety and efficiency of their elevators and buildings as a whole.

Building owners are responsible for the safety of their buildings and should strive to ensure that their buildings are not prominent death traps in the form of poorly serviced elevators. Building owners also have a mandate from local law 87 to carry out energy audits every ten years for buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.

The elevator inspections occur both annually and within a five-year window period. They serve to:

• Ensure the safety of the elevators. • Carry out maintenance on the elevators. • Ensure the elevators are equipped with safety features that are working such as an emergency phone and so on. • Ensure the elevators work efficiently even when being powered by emergency backup generators. • Carry out total weight capacity tests on the elevators and reestablish their weight limits.

Building owners may carry out these elevator tests diligently, but may choose to do a shoddy job on the energy audits. This is attributable greatly to the fact that they do not see the importance of carrying out these surveys because they think that their buildings are in good condition. So how important are energy audits in NYC buildings?

Importance of energy audits in NYC during elevator inspections

You can describe an energy audit as a survey, inspection or analysis carried out on the energy systems of building with the main aim of finding ways to conserve energy. This conservation should not be at the expense of the efficiency of the given systems within that building.

The city of New York is one of the US cities implementing strict local laws to be followed by everyone. In this city, there’s the so called local law 87 NYC. This law is a component of the set of municipal laws that was passed way back in 2009 that constitute the city’s greater and greener building laws. This particular local law is requiring the owner of the “covered building” that measures 50,000 gross sq. ft. or larger to file an EER or Energy Efficiency Report on the building systems of it. This integrates the energy benchmarking outcomes of the building and gives results of the energy audit, as well as a retro-commissioning procedure to be performed every 10 years. This is to enhance the building systems’ energy efficiency by fixing defects, cleaning as well as maintaining the tool.

This local law establishes the schedule of deadline for the buildings to send this information based on the final digit of every block number of their property tax. It contains some provisions that should consider the different types of buildings, energy related certificates for newly constructed buildings and the past audits and energy efficiency work within the structure. The previous year (2013) was the first year Ll87 deadline for all of the covered buildings with tax block numbers ending with the digit “3.”

In complying with the terms under this local law of NYC, every building owner should ask help from a company specializing in energy audits. To get started, you should look for a highly experienced one today and you may start looking for one through the web.

LL84 of needs benchmarking information annually to be given by building managers and owners with over 50, 000 square feet for public disclosure by  May 1st.  The benchmarking information will provide transparency for the usage of water and energy and to keep building a perfect place to live.

Benchmarking Regulation

NYC Department of Building has made a regulation to provide detail on the procedure of benchmarking to meet the requirements of local law 84.

As a whole, the LL84 annual process of benchmarking requires the following; determine if the structure needs to be benchmark in checking the covered building list.

Determine the water and energy use through utilizing benchmarking tool online popularly known as Portfolio Manager, an online benchmarking tool which monitors and measures water and energy use in building.  This remarkable tool is created by EPA or the United States Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star Program.

Submit usage information online to Ney York City by the 1st of May.

The NYC LL84 has monthly maximum if the May 1st cut-off date is missed. Building owners have the chance to obey the regulation and need to submit the needed information before or after May 1st August 1st, November 1st as well as February 1st.  Once they failed to present the benchmarking report on or before the given deadline or by the last quarter cut-off date you violated the law and has a corresponding penalty. So make sure that before February 1st, you must submit the report in order to avoid violation and make sure to recompense the 500 dollars fine.  You can visit the NYC website for further information regarding this sensitive matter.